Sunday, March 14, 2010

The driver is essentially ballast

I haven't watched a grand prix for years, but I'm currently watching the "action" in Bahrain and it's nice to know that nothing has changed. The TV cameras still miss all the interesting bits, the commentators somehow fail to notice the things that they do see on screen ("Oh, Alonso's got ahead of Massa somewhere," two laps after the first corner where it happened) and don't know which car they're looking at, and it's still the car that starts first on the grid that wins, because it's still impossible for a faster car to overtake a much slower one.

I was inspired to watch it by an article saying that three of the four top teams this year have two good drivers racing for them, rather than the traditional one good driver and one less-good one under orders to finish behind his teammate, so we at least get to see which driver of the pair is able to get the faster time in qualifying and thus measure who's the best. And also to see how the Mercedes team sabotage Schumacher's teammate while conveying the impression that he didn't just let him win. But since it's still as boring as ever, I don't think I'll be watching the rest of the season.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is the FIA who run the whole thing. Everyone knows that FIA stands for Ferrari International Assistance, who make one rule for Ferrari and another for everyone else.

Zoomy said...

See, it's to avoid this kind of comment that I don't blog about politics, religion or anything else with hordes of fanatical adherents on all sides of the issue who passionately believe that the authorities/media/general public are biased against their 'team' of choice. You don't get it in sports so much, but maybe I should avoid blogging about fomula 1 too...